The Little Shadows

Very Fond of That

Bella worked her way down the Pantages circuit as the spring wore on, to Los Angeles, where she would have a month playing the top four of the city’s eight Pan-time theatres. As a single headlining act, she did an expanded version of the Bumble Bee song (with very beautiful new wings and clod-hoppy black boots) and had introduced a send-up of Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life from Victor Herbert’s operetta where she played both lovers; she switched her straight song night to night, as fancy took her, between Danny Boy and a new song, I’m Always Chasing Rainbows, a glum little number about bad luck. She thought she might make a hit of Life’s a Very Funny Proposition After All, taking it sad and poignant. If she could bear to do it—although hardly being able to stand performing something seemed to be part of the art of it.

Touring alone these last weeks, she’d worked out a plan for doing Bella’s New Car alone—an elegant lady motorist driving herself in hat and veil, kind of a Gibson girl dame, until the disasters began and she could strip off one piece of veiling at a time, almost a burlesque number except of course that she would still be demurely covered until the contraption blew up and a pull-away frock left her in tattered underclothes.

She was enjoying herself, except when she was not. She had stopped drinking anything more than an occasional polite sherry (Julius’s ulcerative stomach and hideous death being the best of dissuasion), and was sleeping better, except for the nightmares.

Coming backstage her third night at the Arcade on Broadway, she found a note pinned to her dressing-room door. She opened it without much thought, expecting something from the orchestra leader—and saw his name first of all, his initial.

There were no other Ns for her.

Found you. I hear you’re staying at the Alexandria, good hotel. I know you might not want to see me, but I’ll be in the mezzanine at eleven tomorrow morning, in case you do.

See you there, I hope,

N. (NANDO DENT)

He stood against the railing, hat in his hand. Nice grey suit, but it looked like it might be his only one. She had changed her dress eight times.

The mezzanine lobby was empty, the lunch rush not yet begun.

She had thought about what to say, but it flew out of her head. ‘Why didn’t you come up and see me after the show?’

‘Not sure you would talk to me,’ he said. ‘Now you are headlining.’

That was not worthy of comment.

‘Besides,’ he said, turning his hat round and round in his hands, as if it were a stage prop. ‘I tried to make you mad when I left.’

‘That worked.’ She put her hand on a pillar, casual, but needing a bit of support.

Nando looked up, his careful eyes checking her face, and he turned her to a nearby plush-covered bench. They sat, and she waited.

‘You didn’t know my dad, not really. Not when he was so far gone in drinking, nobody knew about that. I couldn’t let you come along and see that. Look what he did to my mam. She wasn’t bad really—she’d had the biscuit. I still can’t blame her.’

‘Do you ever see her?’

‘Haven’t heard a word from her all this time. We know she’s alive, because Harlan the Great sends out Christmas cards to the industry and she’s in them. Looks pretty. Happier.’

‘It was a mean thing to leave you,’ Bella said.

He moved on the bench, got up and walked to the railing. ‘It was a mean thing to leave you,’ he said.

Bella’s eyes suffered an unaccustomed rush of water. Not for herself, but because he did not know what she had been doing. Maybe he thought they could still be partners, or something.

Nando looked at her. She looked over the rail to the staircase instead.

‘I know you was with Pantages,’ he said in a quiet voice. ‘Some people told me, and I saw your photo with him once or twice. You still with him?’

‘No.’

‘He leave you in the lurch too?’

She looked at him again.

‘I figure that’s what I did, is why I’m asking. East and Verrall weren’t fit to look after a girl, and Julius was a sad old drunk. But I couldn’t see anything but Dad then. Without my mam around I’ve got to know him a bit better. He’s still an ugly customer but he’s mellowed a fraction. Got Christian Science now and swears he’s off the bottle.’

‘Is he here?’ She could not help glancing round, half fearing to see that big surly mug.

Nando laughed. ‘No, he’s in the san again, down in Pasadena. I told them not to let him out till I get back, and he’s behaving himself so far.’

‘Well, thank you,’ she said. ‘I mean, for thinking about it. About leaving me.’

‘Too late, though. Your mama’d have my nuts for nickels, and so would your sisters. Whatever you’ve got up to, you were not—’

‘Don’t say it!’ Bella stood and found her hands in fists. ‘Don’t say I was not old enough! I did what I wanted and what I thought I had to do, and I’m not ashamed—you can take that Sunday face off.’

Nando sat silent on the railing, lazy leg dangling, his face flat.

‘You don’t get to scold me,’ she said, still very angry. ‘What have you been up to yourself? Saints all round, I suppose.’

He nodded. ‘Except when I was with someone or other.’

She gasped.

‘I’m not boasting of it, but you ought to know we’re about even.’

Her own face went flat, she felt it. She could not bear to think about Nando with someone else.

‘Only I never found any girl I wanted like you, or that fit my hand so well, and fit my mind, never anyone. How about you?’

Now would be the time to flounce off, all aggrieved.

‘Liked me best of all, didn’t you?’

She bit the inside of her cheek.

‘I made a good bit in the movies so far—nothing like the money in vaude, but the work’s okay. I can take my dad along, they find him something to do. But I’m not stuck on it, I’d come back to the boards if you wanted me. Dad can manage on his own now, he don’t need much from me but a bank draft, time to time.’

‘Why are you—?’ She intended to walk out. She had an independent—She was a headliner, all by herself. All on her own bat.

He spread his hands open. Callused and squared, short crooked fingers, each one of them broken one time or another.

‘I have a little cat, and I’m very fond of that,’ he sang, rusty-voiced. Then he leaned forward, one foot hooked in the mezzanine railing, farther forward than a man could possibly lean, and kissed her mouth.